PHILADELPHIA – When it was over, when A.J. Burnett’s workday was done and the champagne was thrown back in the ice chest, the Yankees starter didn’t even wait for Joe Girardi to reach the pitcher’s mound. Burnettt started his descent early, handed the ball off to his manager on the go, put his head down, and stoically took the band of abuse raining down from Phillies fans.
Back in the dugout, he stared blankly into space. He’d been given the task of pitching the Yankees to glory, of paving their path to a 27th title, and he’d even been staked to an early lead before he ever threw his first pitch in anger. So often these past few weeks, he’d spoken of dreaming precisely this dream a thousand times before: ball in hand, champagne on ice, Commissioner’s Trophy in waiting.
Only, the dream never looked quite like this.
Never included a line that read this way: 2 innings plus four batters; 6 runs, all earned; four hits; four walks. By the time his night was finished so were the Yankees: They would lose 8-6, meaning they will have to wait at least another two days to bolster the corporate trophy case and earn this coronation they still believe is theirs to lose.
The Yankees had hopped on Cliff Lee early, tagged him for a run on a run-scoring double by Alex Rodriguez, and it was apparent that Lee wasn’t anywhere near the untouchable force of nature he’d been in Game 1. They handed that 1-0 lead to Burnett, the third jewel of their $450 million offseason spending spree.
They asked him to do, at least, what every Yankees starter in all of their first 13 postseason games had done: Go six innings. Keep us in the game. Let us get it to a battle of bullpens, at the very least. And let us take our chances from there.
It was a good game plan.
Burnett torched it immediately. Back in the ALCS, he’d had an identical opportunity. The Yankees gave him the ball in Anaheim in Game 5, and he’d managed to surrender four runs to the Angels before he ever recorded an out. But even then, he’d been gritty enough to fight back, to shut down the Angels long enough for his teammates to rally.
This time, though, he was working on three days’ rest. His numbers said that shouldn’t affect him. He’d won all three of his career starts on three days’ rest, including one last summer against the Yankees when he was a Blue Jay. But numbers can lie, and they can bite you at the most inopportune time. They bit back here.
This time, the Phillies scored three runs and had four baserunners before Burnett got an out. Even their outs were loud and scary. And Burnett had nothing. His arm slot was off. His velocity was off. His curve ball spun like a big old Frisbee. He would face 15 hitters and record six outs.
All of that, pasted on his face in the dugout. Not a happy sight.
He’d sounded up to the task, too, sounded so upbeat, so confident, so excited. He sounded like he was prepared to embrace the challenge and bathe in the spotlight, to walk onto the pitcher’s mound at Citizen’s Bank Park and pitch the game of his life and close the lights out on the Phillies season once and for all.
“A pitcher like me has to go out with a little more emotion and a little more — just feed off their crowd as much as I can,” Burnett said early this morning, in the giddy aftermath of the Yankees’ Game 4 victory. “It’s going to be tough, but I’m looking forward to it.”
You could believe him, too, because of the way he’d thrown in Game 2 of this 105th World Series, the first game of the 2009 season that even resembled a must-win for the Yankees, it was on Burnett’s right shoulder to blunt the Phillies’ onslaught. And he had. He’d thrown seven innings, allowed a run and four hits.
Later on, he’d all but come bouncing into the interview room flanked by his sons, A.J. Jr. and Ashton, and he’d spoken of feeling as supremely confident as he’d ever felt on a mound. And he wasn’t shy about how he’d felt when Girardi asked him to work on short rest.
“Well, without sounding too confident, I liked it when I did it in the past,” he’d said. “It was midseason, but I felt great. My body felt great. It just seems like it doesn’t allow you to overdo it. You feel good arm-wise and you get your work in in-between. But there’s something about going on three days. I loved it.”
In the dugout, as the Phillies fans roared, as the Phillies’ season breathed on, he suddenly looked like a man who had officially changed his mind.